Regulation #30

Elysha, the kids, and I visited Alcatraz this summer as a part of our visit to San Fransisco.

While pursuing the gift shop, I stumbled upon this item:

A replica of an actual sign posted when Alcatraz was still a functioning prison,

Also, oddly enough, not a bad policy for a classroom.

Singing is lovely, of course, unless you’re teaching the multiplication algorithm or trying to get kids to understand the indigenous people of pre-contact North America.

Time and place are keys when launching into song.

And there’s nothing wrong with whistling while you’re at recess, but in the classroom?

Even the noisiest kids can’t stand a relentless whistler.

Oddly, the rules of the Alcatraz cell house would work well in a classroom. Regulation #30 would be an incomplete list, of course, but still, not a bad set of guidelines for kids to follow during instruction.

This regulation could also be hung around the neck of most adolescent boys – my son included – who seem to need to make some kind of noise at all times lest they explode. Clicks and spurts and puffs and snaps and taps and hums and mumbles… the list of possible sounds that a ten-year-old boy can make is endless.

My actual list of rules, posted on a hand-lettered wooden sign at the front of the classroom, contains only two items:

Work Hard.
Be Kind.

I’ve always thought those two rules cover just about everything.

Still, while pondering my possible Alcatraz gift shop purchases, I seriously considered purchasing this sign. I thought it might be funny to post in my classroom:

A prison regulation that could oddly also serve as useful classroom rules.

Hilarious.

But then I remembered that not everyone possesses the same sense of humor as me, so I moved on to memorabilia less potentially problematic.

A real sign of maturity for me.

Also a real flaw – an egregious defect of the highest order – in anyone who can’t see the humor of posting a prison sign in a classroom.

So maybe not so much maturity after all.